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Just went away camping in a flimsy summer tent - to the Yorkshire Dales. Set off on a sunny Friday morning - drove and drove and drove until we found the most remote spot we could. Pitched up.
Realised we didn't have the right gas bottle for our super duper camping stove - "never mind," says I, "Bill (name changed) has the bag of coal in his car we will BBQ everything." - Turns out the coal was forgotten and it was getting a bit chilly.
I had a bit of fire wood - it burned out within an hour and there were no trees to get wood from near where we were pitched. 3 of the four of us had injuries of one thing or another. Wood hunting was off the agenda.
We managed to eat some chicken (cooked before the death of the fire) and then decided to turn in for the night after dark. I had brought the wrong batteries for my lantern.
The sunny day was long gone now and the temperature was dipping toward zero. The tent was not built for these conditions. The cold air was seeping in through the huge mesh vents and the bedding felt damp to touch.
At least it wasn't raining.
Yet.
All four of us heard footsteps outside the tent. It was coming up midnight. Surely there should be nobody out there. We listened. The footsteps stopped. We grabbed our weapons of choice. A mallet. A hammer. A quite brilliant baseball bat. We waited... Nothing.
We were all zipped into our pods. To unzip would make too much of a racket and we didn't want to break the silence. Half an hour passed. Still nothing. And then. Footsteps. Loud, undisguised... deliberate. They were getting closer. It felt like they were within feet of the tent. I was surprised that I did not tremble. This time I could not sit there and listen. I shouted to the other pod. "Get up now. Someone out there!"
Me and the Bill both sprung into action. Sort of. We had left our torches in the middle pod and so had to fumble for our respective zips. It probably took us nearly two minutes to get out of our nylon prison, get our shoes on, grab our torches, and get out... Both of us stumbled out of the tent, one from either exit, while the girls stayed in their not very protective sleeping-bag cocoons.
Our powerful 5 million candle emergency torches lit up the night. A two man search party circled the tent and the immediate area. Nothing. We checked the river bank and behind country walls. We looked in every conceivable hiding place. Nothing.
We then came to a sort of brow of a hill and could see down to a road. We could just make out the shape of a big rectangle and presumed it to be a truck. We stood there for a few minutes and listened. Torches off. One eye on the (not too far off) tent.
A loud bang shattered the silence and seemed to rumble across the hill. It was an unfamiliar sound but after some thought we had no option but to assign blame to a truck door possibly slamming on the rectangle.
It was easier to cling to that thought than say we didn't know what it was.
After waiting a while we turned and headed for our tent. We couldn't find anything amiss and were happy to be heading back to the relative (but still fridge like) warmth of the tent. Everything seemed ok now - but our troubles were only just beginning...
(I'll tell you the rest later I am bored of typing for now.)
Realised we didn't have the right gas bottle for our super duper camping stove - "never mind," says I, "Bill (name changed) has the bag of coal in his car we will BBQ everything." - Turns out the coal was forgotten and it was getting a bit chilly.
I had a bit of fire wood - it burned out within an hour and there were no trees to get wood from near where we were pitched. 3 of the four of us had injuries of one thing or another. Wood hunting was off the agenda.
We managed to eat some chicken (cooked before the death of the fire) and then decided to turn in for the night after dark. I had brought the wrong batteries for my lantern.
The sunny day was long gone now and the temperature was dipping toward zero. The tent was not built for these conditions. The cold air was seeping in through the huge mesh vents and the bedding felt damp to touch.
At least it wasn't raining.
Yet.
All four of us heard footsteps outside the tent. It was coming up midnight. Surely there should be nobody out there. We listened. The footsteps stopped. We grabbed our weapons of choice. A mallet. A hammer. A quite brilliant baseball bat. We waited... Nothing.
We were all zipped into our pods. To unzip would make too much of a racket and we didn't want to break the silence. Half an hour passed. Still nothing. And then. Footsteps. Loud, undisguised... deliberate. They were getting closer. It felt like they were within feet of the tent. I was surprised that I did not tremble. This time I could not sit there and listen. I shouted to the other pod. "Get up now. Someone out there!"
Me and the Bill both sprung into action. Sort of. We had left our torches in the middle pod and so had to fumble for our respective zips. It probably took us nearly two minutes to get out of our nylon prison, get our shoes on, grab our torches, and get out... Both of us stumbled out of the tent, one from either exit, while the girls stayed in their not very protective sleeping-bag cocoons.
Our powerful 5 million candle emergency torches lit up the night. A two man search party circled the tent and the immediate area. Nothing. We checked the river bank and behind country walls. We looked in every conceivable hiding place. Nothing.
We then came to a sort of brow of a hill and could see down to a road. We could just make out the shape of a big rectangle and presumed it to be a truck. We stood there for a few minutes and listened. Torches off. One eye on the (not too far off) tent.
A loud bang shattered the silence and seemed to rumble across the hill. It was an unfamiliar sound but after some thought we had no option but to assign blame to a truck door possibly slamming on the rectangle.
It was easier to cling to that thought than say we didn't know what it was.
After waiting a while we turned and headed for our tent. We couldn't find anything amiss and were happy to be heading back to the relative (but still fridge like) warmth of the tent. Everything seemed ok now - but our troubles were only just beginning...
(I'll tell you the rest later I am bored of typing for now.)
